Real Team Building

Is offering a “team building” opportunity a hard sell to your co-workers?

Is paying for out-of-office events hard on your budget during the current economic malaise?

For yourself and others, the answer is increasingly “yes”, but that does not eliminate the fact that your colleagues could benefit from a morale boost or professional development. In fact, a team building outing could give you the competitive boost you need to thrive while others struggle to survive.

The solution to this dilemma is redefining “team building” through Run Brain Run.

Team Building Defined…

In its most basic sense, team building is just a term for an activity that incorporates collective skills and decision making as a way to accomplish goals. Simple, right?

Most things are simpler on paper than in practice, though. Team building in practice and by definition should challenge participants in rewarding or beneficial ways. And therein lies the problem. Many activities involve teams without being team-building, or lack rewarding and beneficial outcomes.

Many of those activities have ad hoc teams while others don’t even involve teams or groups. They may be fun for some, but they all have questionable and possibly negative outcomes: Regret, possible injury, and - worst of all - dread of the next company event.

Recreational Team Building (aka Morale Boosts)

Defining this term is the easiest nut to crack, because the goal is to relieve stress, encourage bonding, and improve morale. Good old fashioned fun and games, right?

Well, let’s see.

What’s stress relieving about cartwheeling off a rope bridge for the fifth time on the ropes course? What’s more relaxing than the sound of hammering pistons in your ear as your colleague’s go-cart careens into yours on the final stretch, stealing a hard-earned victory from your pedal pushing foot?

Okay, those are extreme illustrations of a very simple point: many activities don’t fit the basic criteria of recreational team building.

Can you justify spending your budget on the aforementioned “unusual suspects” in the name of “team building”? Do you remember when your teacher used to assign “busy work”? She insisted it was important, but you all knew that it was filler work, however well meant. Many activities proffered as “team-building” have become the new busywork-disguised-as-bonding in the world of professional development.

Just Plain Fun

Run Brain Run’s Recreational Team Building events offer meaningful opportunities for team work and bonding experiences outside the typical office setting.

It is now, during economic uncertainty, when employees’ fears and anxieties need to be assuaged for feelings of self-worth and comradeship. Self-worth comes from the feeling that time is spent doing meaningful things. A boost in morale is certainly meaningful to most!

Helping your group solve a location puzzle because you know north from south, or left from right, is as rewarding as hitting a home run, because the same reward center of the brain is triggered. The difference is that a Run Brain Run puzzle sets you up for success better than the physically demanding constraints of a sport.

Begin building brains with our clue & challenge games, game shows, and philanthrophic team events. To Run Brain Run, recreational team building means the whole team is out there having fun.

Educational Team Building (aka Learning from Fun and Games)

What if improving team proficiency, skill sets, and knowledge could be achieved in a game show?

On site or off.

Chances are, your colleagues would learn what was required, plus they would enjoy a spirited social engagement and change of routine.

Television reality shows and game shows are popular, because people like challenges, interaction, and fun. They also like flashing lights and buttons that go, “bzzt”!Volkswagen conducted an experiment wherein commuter use of a staircase adjacent to an escalator increased 60% when the stairs were fixed with pressure triggers that intoned simulated piano notes when stepped on.

The conclusion: people prefer to have fun.

Reinforcing Key Information

Any Run Brain Run event may be adapted from Recreational team building to Educational team building by incorporating custom questions, clues, challenges, trivia and terminology. We help your team master new talents and proficiencies to be applied to real situations.

Real Developmental Team Building (aka Strategic Teambuilding)

Your team needs more than just a morale boost and more than skills review: they need real coaching to improve communication, best practices, or productivity.

Who will your trust to direct and communicate this process?

An monotonous motivational speaker? A patronizing pitchman?

Brain Building

Run Brain Run takes Recreational and Educational Team Building to the professional level by incorporating Developmental Team Building into our game theory. Though still couched in entertaining activities and social bonding, our professional facilitators focus on using situational challenges to retrain, evaluate, reinforce, and improve established skills important for long-term group success. Post-event workshops discussions and debriefings help individuals come away with improved expertise in areas they may later apply to personal and professional advancement.

Play Outside the Box Cubicle

If you are ready to improve team cohesion, morale and productivity at a fraction of the cost on interactive alternate reality games and events, Run Brain Run is ready to set your team up for success. Explore our family of games on the rest of the site to see the exciting upgrades we offer to find the best fit for your team. Then…